Japan "is the cradle of our industry," Moore writes, but "one of the frustrations of being an American company attempting to do business in Japan is the insularity of the industry that defends locally-made content and looks down on games from abroad."

Moore mentions his experience with Japan while at Microsoft and acknowledges that factors such as genre, gameplay and art design have been factors in making a breakthrough. But, "with simulation sports games, these issues would seem much less relevant - it's typically about the gameplay. So you can imagine my disappointment every year as we struggle to break through in Japan with our outstanding FIFA franchise."

He goes on:

It is clear we still have work to do in Japan to more fully understand what drives that gamers attraction to sports titles. Let me be clear on this. I recognize that there are many factors that contribute to a gamer's decision to purchase (or not) a particular game, I'd just hate for the gamers in Japan to not get as much enjoyment as the rest of the world out of the best sports game of this console generation.

Honestly, Moore could also be saying the same thing about FIFA's acceptance in the United States. Granted, it sells much better here, but the U.S. is also very hidebound to its domestic traditions, especially the big four of major team sports. Soccer, football, kick-ball, however you call it, is a relatively new sport to Japan no matter its popularity. The J. League (1992), Japan's top tier association, has been around about as long as the MLS (1993). Maybe an MVP Baseball for Japan's Central and Pacific Leagues? Hell, I loved MVP in the States, I'd play that.

It might be a little nearsighted to chalk this up to insularity. It could be other things, such as sports preference and the tradition sports games have in Japan with which I will confess, I don't have much familiarity. Whatever the case, it's clear EA Sports is not exempt from his company's efforts in that market.

FIFA in Japan [Peter Moore's Official Blog]

At the PLAY Conference this past weekend, I got to watch the man at work during "The Monetization Game" panel, which also featured Kai Huang — one of Guitar Hero's masterminds — and ngmoco CEO Neil Young. Moore had most of the crowd-pleasing moments and more than a few fair points. But here's a round-up of some of the things these guys said to get the crowd going:

Point One: Plastic and Digital
A big part of the talk centered around plastic peripherals. After all, if the fate of video games is to go all digital download, what's going to happen to all those games that rely on plastic instruments?

At some point during the talk, the moderator asked if the market was saturated with plastic peripherals.

Moore answered, "We're at the point of how much do you want to pay. How many people bought the maracas for Samba de Amigo? [Two people raise their hands]. But if you look at the ability of the industry to sustain the big box mentality — Guitar Hero, Rock Band — it's going to be a challenge. The first time somebody puts a skateboard through their television set... To what extent is the user willing to pay?"

Then he took a dig at Wii Fit's "bathroom scales" as compared to EA Sports Active's awesomeness that doesn't require an expensive peripheral. Later he went after Activision head Bobby Kotick about how if people stop buying Guitar Hero, he'll be sitting on half the world's plastic.

Fair point, but how are you going to get a guitar in the hands of everybody who wants to play Guitar Hero? Face it, cell phone interfaces just aren't the same.

Point Two: Word of mouth marketing
The talk touched on marketing the multiple iterations of Guitar Hero. Huang explained that before the world was used to music video games, the franchise needed a lot of marketing to get people used to the idea of using a plastic guitar. But despite all the dollars dropped on celebrity commercials, it was word of mouth that got games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero into the mainstream.

Here's how Young put it: "There's two types of games. There are games you launch, [sell well], and then they go down. The second type of game just kind of chugs along, does a hundred downloads the first hour. Then a hundred and twenty-five the second hour, a hundred and forty the third hour. What you're seeing is word of mouth happening in front of you."

But Young develops games for the iPhone that publish updates to your Facebook where you're one click away from downloading the game demo for yourself. So maybe word-of-mouth marketing works better for him because it's all digital.

Ask yourself if you're more likely to buy Uncharted 2 after reading Kotaku's review of the game, or after reading Brian Crecente's Facebook status updates about it.

Point Three: Dude, Where's Your Xbox?
Early on in the talk, Moore mentioned that he recently bought a ROKU box to download movies at home. During the Q&A, a Microsoft employee got up and asked him — quite rightly — what happened to his Xbox 360? Then he asked a real question about how soon we could expect to be rid of physical media.

Young answered the first part for Moore: "It red-ringed."

Then Moore said, "[The industry is] at least a decade away from saying goodbye to a physical disc. The more important question is what does the next generation of console look like?" Will it have a disc drive or just anInternet connection? Whatever it is, says Moore, it'll probably be Microsoft that makes the jump first.

Well played, Moore.

Final Point: Chicks and Madden
Moore said that 85% of Madden users (note: not buyers) are male and 65% of EA Sports Active users are female. EA Sports wants to level these numbers out in terms of gender equality, but it's not quite sure how to.

Ladies, any suggestions?

Image Cred

According to comments made by EA Sports boss Peter Moore to VG247, it sounds like the company is holding off on the PS3/360 versions of its tennis game until Project Natal and Sony's unnamed motion controller hit. The reason being that the Wii MotionPlus control was just too good.

Moore says that the one-to-one control MotionPlus add-on "ruined" traditional controls for the Wimbledon-licensed game, that it became "glaringly obvious" that waggle was the way to go for the sports game.

Since we don't have firm dates for Sony and Microsoft's motion control offerings, that indefinite delay to the game makes a lot more sense now. What we're looking forward to most is Sony putting a name to its PlayStation Eye-powered wand, so we can stop saying "Sony's unnamed motion controller."

Moore – 360 and PS3 Grand Slam Tennis will be released, will use motion tech [VG247]

Blogs Peter Moore, "I don't think it is an overstatement to say that the Dreamcast and it's online network laid the ground for what we all take for granted today - online game play, linking innumerable gamers from around the world to play, compete and collaborate, as well as enabling new content to be delivered in addition to that which was delivered on the disc."

The Dreamcast certainly pioneered home console gaming as we know it today, but ultimately was killed off by the ubiquitous Sony PlayStation 2.

Moore talks about the Dreamcast in greater depth on his EA Sports blog, so do check it out. Oh, he also throws SEGA Japan under the bus when he clears up a misconception regarding the console's demise:

The decision was made, from Japan, to pull the plug and begin the transition to becoming a multi-platform third party developer and publisher. We at SOA, while disappointed, were in full agreement that this was the only real course of action, and it was with a heavy heart that I hosted the conference call on January 31st, 2001, announcing that Sega was ceasing manufacturing of the Dreamcast console. The call on the decision was made by SOJ. The conference call to announce the decision was conducted by SOA.

9/9/99 – Ten Years After - Peter Moore Blog [Peter Moore Blog via Eurogamer] [Pic]

As reported by IndustryGamers, Moore said that, with 10 days to go before the Aug. 14 drop, "we're now marginally ahead year-on-year." Last year, the pre-sales apparently were uninteresting enough that EA felt it relevant to ask if they were an key indicator of a title's strength at release. "But we're marginally ahead and the buzz we're now starting to feel for the title is starting to build," Moore boasted.

This year, Madden 10 will ship on a Friday, to take advantage of the preceding Thursday night NFL debut featuring the Steelers and the Cardinals - the Super Bowl contestants whose Troy Polamalu and Larry Fitzgerald, respectively, grace the cover.

"There will be a tremendous amount of marketing both at half-time and in and around the game on that, so hopefully we'll have a very strong launch at 12:01AM on August 14th," he said. "All the metrics are very, very positive right now for Madden."

Madden NFL 10 Pre-Sales Tracking Ahead of 09, Says Peter Moore [IndustryGamers]

EA Sports head honcho Peter Moore says that the sports label is focused on getting the already announced expansion pack for EA Sports Active out before the holidays. That means the powers that be are pulling Grand Slam Tennis staff off the PS3 and 360 versions to make sure the fitness game add-on doesn't slip.

It's a rare case of a Wii release taking higher priority than the hi-def console versions, part of EA's new Wii-skewed master plan. Considering EA Sports Active did 1.8 million in sales during the publisher's last quarter, we'd wager it's the right move.

Moore didn't offer a new date for the tennis game, previously slated for the fall, but we've pestered EA Sports reps to get clarification.

Update: And how quickly that clarification came! An EA Sports rep said that the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Grand Slam Tennis have been "delayed indefinitely." However, that same rep said that EA still plans to release those products, despite the dire sounding delay.

Moore described Madden Arcade as following in the vein of the publisher's Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network release 3 on 3 NHL Arcade, which featured big headed hockey pros going head to head in teams of three. We'd expect something similarly super-deformed from the Madden version when the arcade style football game is made available for download.

We're checking in with EA Sports folks to get more details.

"Probably gets better, because now John is home, in the Bay Area, where we're headquartered," says Peter Moore. "And in fact our team is there with him right now. He has a production company in the East Bay and I'm spending more time with him because he's not traveling anymore."

Moore points out that the Madden license continues "for quite a while". When asked what will happen to Madden way down the road, Moore replied, "If you said to me that once I'm gone there's a video game that lives on with my name, there's certainly achievements with my name on already, so it might be a fitting legacy. I don't think anymore that people would think it would be weird if when ultimately he's no longer with us that the game carries on." Just as no one thinks its weird that the Lombardi trophy is named after Vince Lombardi.

Peter Moore on the Strategy of Sports [Gamasutra]

[This post is the fourth in a series that recounts the chain of questions and answers I solicited from the people I interviewed during E3. I asked each of my interviewees to ask a question of the next one. Hence: Chain Interview.]

Shane Kim, Microsoft corporate vice president for long-term strategy in the Xbox 360 group responds: "We're really pleased to have Take Two and EA doing well on our platform with their sports games. So sports as a gaming genre is obviously very important.

"The way I think about sports is in a broader context. Sports is something that hundreds of millions of people are super-passionate about. That's where I think the opportunity is for us to do really interesting things with Xbox 360 and Xbox Live. While you can pick a number from a hat – [there are] six or seven million people who play Madden, there are a 100 million people who watch the NFL during the season. That's a very interesting market. So can we create an experience on our platform for that a football enthusiast or a basketball enthusiast or a baseball enthusiast..."

[At this point Kim got up and directed my attention to an Xbox 360 that was running a demo of a new service which will show Premier League soccer matches in a window surrounded by an audience of Xbox Live avatars. In the margins there was room for trivia and metagame stats based on the number of fans logged in from each team.]

"That's not a soccer game," Kim added, "But that's Premier League live matches being broadcast on Xbox Live surrounded by our social entertainment experience…This is a much better video gaming experience to me than just watching the game."

Impressive, Shane, but did you have a question for your former Microsoft colleague Peter Moore, the head of EA Sports whom I would be interviewing next?

He did.

Shane Kim asks EA Sports chief Peter Moore : "What Microsoft executive do you miss the most from the Xbox group?"

I talked to Moore in one of EA's meeting areas. After our interview, I tested his wit by seeing how he could answer Kim's question.

Peter Moore responds: "Whilst that is like saying, which of my children do I love most, boy, it's got to be Master Chief. It's got to be."

I pointed out that Master Chief is not an executive. Laughing, Moore quickly replied: "He's responsible for more revenue than anybody else I left behind there."

Fair enough. And did he have a question for my next interviewee, his boss and EA CEO John Riccitiello?
He did. Some context: Most of the parking spots at EA's headquarters are not reserved. Moore told me only two are, for electric cars. So…

Peter Moore asks EA CEO John Riccitiello: "How can you live with yourself by deliberately buying an electric car so you can get a reserved parking spot at Electronic Arts?"

Please come back for the answer and the final key links in our Chain Interview.

At least not when it comes to Wii games. The EA Sports' label president tells Gamasutra that the company is less focused on Metacritic averages for Wii software than it is for more general consumer reviews. He points to Amazon.com user reviews and more mainstream media outlets—as well as "mommy bloggers"—as more valuable measuring sticks.

On the topic of EA Sports own EA Sports Active, Moore says that sites like our own aren't necessarily what the publisher is targeting, it's Amazon. (Currently, EA Sports Active is averaging four-and-a-half stars out of five at Amazon.com based on over 200 user reviews. That's the same score Nintendo's own Wii Fit currently holds.)

"We're not going to Kotaku or Operation Sports on this one, we're going to Amazon," Moore tells Gamasutra. "The thing is with the Wii, it seems to be for the gaming sites, it's the last platform they review."

Admittedly, we have yet to review EA Sports Active. But that's only because we just got the game last week, while the majority of us were at E3. We're also not going to factor into the Metacritic average, as we don't provide them with review scores.

But we'll get to it, Peter. We'll definitely get to it.

EA Sports' Moore: Metacritic Less Relevant To Wii Game Sales [Gamasutra]

It's an odd-numbered year this year, and so it is that EA Sports shall give us a boxing game. Fight Night Round 4, to be specific. Later this month.

EA Sports' Peter Moore sat with Kotaku at E3 last week to talk about the more athletic wing of Electronic Arts. We talked about the newest sport in the EA Sports roster, Mixed Martial Arts, which gets its first EA treatment next year.

"It gives us a rhythm of a fighting game every year," Moore said, saying that boxing and MMA would alternate years. "That's the plan. If you think of 2010, we're bringing MMA. In 2011, Fight Night Round 5." Moore instantly qualified that with: "That's not an announcement." But we were already complimenting him on picking out the title. He laughed. "It's not hard."

The biggest name in MMA is UFC, to the point that it dwarfs its competitors in public awareness in the way WWE does its pro wrestling rivals. But THQ has the MMA license, not EA. That doesn't shake Moore.

"This is a long-term play for us. I have nothing but the greatest respect for UFC and what THQ has done with that franchise. [UFC boss] Dana White has done unbelievable with the sport itself. I'm a big fan.
But I think there's room for a contender. Clearly, we're a contender in the first year. Our job is to make the sport even more interesting by bringing EA Sports authenticity to it. And we're in this for the long haul."

Moore said he does not know how long THQ has the UFC license but said there are other viable MMA groups out there with fighters who might fight the game. Moore attended a card held by the Strike Force group a couple of weeks ago, for example. "We're going to get who we need to get," Moore said. "Ask me again in five years if we've been successful."

"We're ready for the fight," EA Sports chief Peter Moore said in a press release. No other details were given regarding fighters, arenas and so forth.

Rival publisher THQ publishes games based on the world-famous UFC license.

The EA Sports MMA official site is mostly barren, for now.

EA Sports president Peter Moore says its up to the developers to figure out how to make titles that do well on the Wii. "I think the emphasis is on the third parties to crack the code on the Wii, and there are some games that have done well from third parties, and figure out what we need to do when we're playing on the Wii to make that game successful," Moore explains.

"But at the same time," he continues, "it's not rocket science, and we in the publishing community have got to go and figure that out." One shovelware game at a time.

Peter Moore - Part Two [gamesindustry] [Pic]

It was way back in April of last year that EA Sports chief Peter Moore leveled with gamers and said that the mighty Madden franchise wouldn't be coming to PC.

So there was no PC version of Madden NFL 09.

And then, this spring, while I was being shown Madden NFL 10, I inquired about the lack of a PC version of that game. An EA Sports rep told me there was "more to come" on the PC Madden front but there would not be a Madden NFL 10 for PC.

Today, I reached out for clarification, and received a statement EA's been using for several weeks: "We have no plans to release Madden NFL 10 on the PC this year. We continue to explore ideas to revitalize the PC for sports games and the types of games that are best suited to the platform, and this remains our goal for the Madden NFL franchise."

I do recall that back in November, when my job involved sitting on the other side of the wall from Kurt Loder, I attended a New York City investor conference and asked Moore what his 2008 EA Sports highlight was. He cited a Korean release of FIFA Online 2 for PC, a free-to-play, micro-transaction-based version of a game that most of the rest of the world plays the old-fashioned way on consoles.

That's the other cleat I've been waiting to drop. That's what I thought would be part of the EA Sports showcase I attended in New York a few weeks ago that featured Madden for the consoles. But nothing like that was there.

EA isn't saying. All's silent regarding the next Madden PC project for now.

I think we need to continue to work on the Wii. When I look at the attach rate on the Wii of our software to where I think we should be, we're under-performing still, we need to do much better

Sure do. Know a good place to start, Pete? Quit introducing cartoony graphics and take a look at Konami's Pro Evo. While the shinier versions of EA's FIFA have gone 3-1 up at halftime against Pro Evolution, it's a different story on Wii, where Pro Evo is one of the best examples on the whole console as to how to implement Wii controls (not just big heads and minigames) with a little flair and imagination.

Moore: EA is under-performing on Wii [Eurogamer]

EA Sports titles have gone crazy online this year, with the 500 million plus games being played representing a jump of 175% over the previous year, with 2.2 million games being played on average each day. These numbers represent the entirety of the EA Sports lineup, from American football to European football and everything in between. Why the big jump? EA Sports president Peter Moore knows the score.

"Online game play allows real-time competitions with fans from around the world who speak the global language of sports. EA SPORTS is committed to providing personal access to the emotion of sports by continuing to create immersive online features, compelling new downloadable content and daily real-time stats updates."

And the numbers don't end there! Six separate EA Sports titles have more than 500,000 registered online users, with Madden and FIFA boasting more than 2.4 million apiece. Since last summer, gamers have spent more than 4 billion minutes playing EA Sports titles a day, with more than 35 years worth of games being played each day.

In other words, sports gamers are insane. We knew this, and we love them anyway.

No, we haven't been privy to a sneak peek at the newest guaranteed Madden-branded blockbuster, we're just making an educated guess. The Madden NFL 10 debut also comes with an extra dose of EA Sports boss Peter Moore, who will drop some sporting knowledge on GTTV host Geoff Keighley.

Also coming to your television are details on Activision's Prototype and first cinematic footage of Atari's Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Maybe not quite as exciting as another yearly cycle of EA style football or even Peter Moore face time, but probably worth keeping your eyes open for.

The show runs late Thursday night at 12:30 AM. Yes, we known that's technically Friday morning.

Moore, when asked by GameTrailers TV's Geoff Keighley about his knowledge of Microsoft's plans—plans that may have formed during Moore's tenure at the company—he's pretty cagey. While Peter likely has full knowledge of the Xbox 360 maker's motion control goals, he's not going to burn any bridges.

"I think that, knowing Microsoft in particular, obviously, is that they are constantly thinking three to five years ahead of where consumer behavior is going to be," Moore says, carefully dodging anything resembling confirmation. He wagers that the Microsoft of right now is thinking about "how do people want to interact with their games and probably thinking about now how do we replicate motion control, but how we go one step further."

And what about those rumors of EA Sports' involvement in a mixed martial arts game, Peter? Feel like confirming that on cable?

"We keep a very close eye on it, but nothing to announce right now," Moore said, lauding THQ and Crave's work on current and past UFC games.

While motion controller on the Xbox 360 front has slowed, particularly as Microsoft's console sales increase, it's hard to imagine the chatter from years past was based on nothing but speculation. Especially when we consider the publicly anonymous sources of those rumors.

The more suspicious of us might think that some of that chatter was planted, to see how the Xbox 360 public would react to such an idea.

GameTrailers TV

Simply hit the Xbox 360 guide button "while playing a killer solo," just like ol' Pete did way back at E3 2007. For those who remember his somewhat clumsy on-stage Rock Band performance from the Microsoft keynote—as The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai developers clearly do—they'll definitely appreciate the reference. We're not sure how well Peter does, especially since he tried to correct that keynote mojo-killing delay of game at a later event.

Everyone else will just be slightly confused. Thanks for the heads up, Carlos.

Mr. Moore proudly touts that this year's edition of the two-decade-old footballer is hitting the "real sweet spot of development for this generation of consoles as the team is really hitting its stride in squeezing every ounce of power and capability from the hardware." But Peter has even more excited pitches planned to encourage Madden fans to buy, buy again.

Madden NFL 10 "is going to continue to push the boundaries of authenticity in gameplay, presentation, and art style." Plus, "the authenticity of gameplay is showing striking improvement in physics, realism and responsiveness." And, for people who like increasingly early announcements, Moore says "the Madden team is taking such dramatic strides this year that we're in the position to go deep on features and details earlier than we've ever done before."

And on top of that, Peter says "it's abundantly clear that this could be the deepest, most graphically-rich Madden ever, and a stunning testament to the talented development team who have had a maniacal focus delivering a landmark title to Madden Nation in 2009." Maniacal! God, this man knows how to pitch!

That's all gotta be exciting for the Madden fan in you. If not, we're sure you'll have some kind of fun picking apart the folding and shadowing properties of Ben Roethlisberger's hip towel. Like? Dislike?

Fight For Every Yard [Peter Moore Blog]